


something new

by jdphoenix



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: F/M, Season/Series 01
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-14
Updated: 2016-05-14
Packaged: 2018-06-08 10:46:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,099
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6851569
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jdphoenix/pseuds/jdphoenix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Have you washed your hands yet?”</p>
            </blockquote>





	something new

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SapphireBlueJiyuu](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SapphireBlueJiyuu/gifts).



> I started this _ages_ ago for the prompt "things you said through the door" and I'm finishing it now as a birthday gift for the amazing SapphireBlueJiyuu. I hope you enjoy, hon.  <3 <3 <3

Unsanitary as it may be, Jemma can’t bring herself to leave the bathroom. She uses a towel as a cushion and sits on the tiled floor, allowing her head to rest against the door and her eyes to close. Ward’s voice, even annoyed as he is, is somehow soothing to the headache pounding behind her eyes.

“I’m perfectly capable of defending myself against a few drunks,” he says. And Skye must fire back with something about Jemma because he answers it with, “I told you, Simmons is fine too. It was a minor altercation, not worth ruining everyone’s night off over. Now will you tell Coulson we’ll be at the airfield by noon? … _Thank_ you.”

Seated as she is on the floor, Jemma can feel more than hear Ward approaching, but she still startles when he taps the door gently.

“Hey. You hear all that?”

She swallows. “They heard about the fight?” she asks, hoping the bathroom’s echo hides the unnaturally high pitch of her voice.

She chose, on a whim, to follow Ward to wherever his night off took him. It was an effort to both enjoy herself and avoid Skye and Fitz - mostly Fitz; he was an utter _prat_ during yesterday’s mission and she wasn’t about to forgive him so easily as he’d hoped. So she’d wandered into a less than reputable establishment in search of Ward and, after a few drinks, found herself the unwelcoming recipient of a groping. Ward appeared then and took care of matters with extreme prejudice.

“Yeah. It got a few hundred hits on youtube before some comms agent scrubbed it.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Not your fault.”

They had the same exchange several times last night. Ward insisted it was entirely the fault of those Neanderthals at the bar but that didn’t stop her feeling guilty over his scrapes and bruises - not that she felt the least guilty for the much more serious injuries the other men suffered.

“We’ve got a mission,” he says with the air of someone trying to avoid a subject. “I bought us a little time but I’m thinking, with the video and all, we should probably try to get there ASAP.”

“Right.” Jemma doesn’t move from the floor. That will be a problem. Not the getting up and dressing and checking out of this hotel room parts of leaving but rather what will be left undone as a result.

“Si- Jemma?” There’s a scraping against the door and she hears what must be Ward taking a seat, unknowingly mirroring her position. “There’s really no easy way to say this…” His breath is audible and she considers putting him out of his misery, but as she doesn’t know any better than he does how to broach the subject, the silence remains for several long seconds. “Have you washed your hands yet?”

That’s one way to go about it. She smiles down at them in her lap. The cheap ring sparkles up at her from her left.

“To my great shame,” she says, “I remember everything.”

There’s a thump slightly above her head. “So I didn’t have a really vivid dream about a Vegas wedding chapel and this very official looking legal document isn’t part of some over-the-top prank?”

“Sadly, no. Not,” she adds hastily, “that it’s _sad_ being your-” She sighs. “Oh, this is a mess.”

“We don’t have time to get it annulled,” he says, giving voice to what she already knew, “not if we don’t want to delay the mission. And Coulson’s already on our asses - mine, anyway - for that video.”

“Perhaps they don’t need us?” Jemma suggests.

“It’s a Centipede lead.”

“Bugger.”

“Yeah. And anyway, it’s not like we could hide our being married from an intelligence organization.”

“So there’s a chance Coulson will already know and we won’t have to tell him?” she asks hopefully. She does not wish to repeat the dressing down she received after throwing herself from the Bus.

“You honestly think Coulson will let us off that easy?”

No, she rather doubts it. It would be just like him to keep it to himself in order to force them to confess.

“Will we get in a lot of trouble, do you think?” She has no idea what the handbook has to say about agents accidentally getting married on their downtime, but she doubts it’s good.

“He’ll be mad, but it’s an easy annulment. Once the mission’s over, we just fly back to Nevada and that’ll be that.”

“Right.” That will be that. Nothing to be in the least concerned over.

She can hear him stand and does the same herself. He’ll likely have to use the bathroom at some point and she’s fairly sick of its pink pastel walls, so she hurriedly opens the door. Ward freezes on the other side. He’s wearing his boxers - which is more than he had on when the ringing phone woke them both and she made her hasty retreat into the bathroom - and it’s not as though she hasn’t seen his body in professional circumstances before; it’s just … different. She remembers - suddenly, vividly - what his skin felt like under her hands, the way his abs bucked when she left that mark on his collarbone, the sound he made when she reached between them.

She swallows.

And sees him do the same.

His shirt, grabbed off the floor on her way to the bathroom, is open, giving him an even more intimate view than she has.

Clearly something needs to be said and she opens her mouth to say it - though she has no idea what it will be.

“Ward-” His name seems a good place to start and her mouth curves into a smile around the word. She tips her head to one side. “You know I always thought I’d keep my maiden name for professional reasons, but I imagine having the name of a high level specialist might help when the time comes for budget allocations and the like.”

He makes a decent effort at frowning, she’ll give him that, but after only a few seconds of struggle they’re both laughing. It’s just so _absurd_. She’s been trying for months to grow out of her adolescent crush on him (or, barring that, find some excuse to jump him) and now they’re _married_.

She steps aside, out of the doorway, and makes to take off his shirt.

“No,” he says, his eyes fixed firmly on the baseboards. “That’s- I’ll get it later.” And he disappears into the loo without looking her way again.

She busies herself dressing, which takes both too much (her clothes are _everywhere_ ) and too little time. That done and little else to do, she flattens the sheets on the bed, lays out Ward’s shirt and pants (which were under the dresser along with her left shoe), and then sits while she goes through her phone messages.

The good news is that Fitz was so worried between the video and her lack of response that he’s apologized - and subsequently made his way back around to being a prat again, but as this time it comes from worry, she’ll forgive him. There’s the mission alert from Coulson as well as several messages from Skye asking if she’s all right and whether she needs them to swing around with the short bus to “save her from Ward’s white knighting.”

Ward (should she be thinking of him as Grant now? Even ignoring the - _temporary_ \- name change, the things they did last night certainly belie a professional relationship) emerges while she’s reading that last one and she gives him an uneven smile.

“Skye is never going to let us live this down.”

“Nope,” he agrees, running a hand through his slightly damp hair. He’s still got his morning scruff and it’s not as though he took his clothes in there to dress, so she can only imagine he fled into the bathroom to … well, _flee_.

“Thanks,” he mutters as he picks up his pants from the end of the bed. Her smile stretches thin in reply and she pockets her phone, ready to go. But she doesn’t want to rush him, so she fiddles with her necklace while she waits, her eyes fixed on the door. If she looks at him, she’ll certainly start thinking about last night - about how amazing it felt to touch his skin with her bare hands instead of through gloves, about the thrill she felt when his eyes, heavy with want, fell on her.

She swallows thickly and is surprised to realize he still hasn’t got his shirt on yet. She dares a glance up at him and finds his gaze fixed on her.

He clears his throat and pays far too much attention to his shirt. “You might wanna tighten that.” He points briefly to the string at the collar of her blouse and she looks down to find a dark mark at the top of her breast. She hurriedly undoes the knot and reties it to better hide the evidence.

She hesitates once it’s done, fingers closed over the ring on her left hand. It’s silly but it somehow feels wrong to take off her wedding ring. It’s not a real marriage and the ring signifies nothing at all - save the disciplinary action surely waiting in her future - but she had all sorts of silly, private fantasies and now, even if she does get them somehow, she’ll always know it’s not her first.

Ward’s large hands are surprisingly delicate over hers, moving her fingers aside to remove the ring himself. “I’ll hold onto them,” he says, and she watches as he removes his as well and pockets them both.

He’s still got one hand on hers and uses it to pull her to her feet. She stares up at him, lip caught between her teeth. He isn’t shorter - that would be impossible - but standing face to face with him now, he doesn’t seem to tower quite as much as he used to.

His hand lifts, catching her attention, and it promptly stalls in midair before returning to his side. “We should go.”

“Yes,” she agrees, “we should.”

He moves for the door.

She doesn’t.

“Simmons?”

She’s not entirely sure how to respond, how to explain that leaving this room means leaving behind all her childish fantasies - not only about her wedding and subsequent marriage but about him as well. (There’s certainly little chance of anything happening between them after … well, after everything’s happened between them.)

“Would you mind-” Her eyes fix on his shirt, on the location of the mark she left on his collarbone. What can possibly be worse than knowing he’ll be carrying that around for days? She smiles at her own foolishness and lifts her eyes to his again. “Would you kiss me please?”

His jaw tightens and one of his eyebrows actually twitches. If she’s ever over the embarrassment of this day, she might have to tell Skye about that. “I don’t think that’s a good idea,” he says carefully.

“I know,” she says, “and I don’t mean it to be anything-” she gestures behind her at the bed- “and I don’t know how to explain at all, I just would very much like you to kiss me.” Goodbye. To kiss her goodbye, but saying as much would be terribly sappy and she might actually cry if she has to put it into words. So she doesn’t.

She can’t begin to imagine what he’s thinking and she’s just considering taking it back when he says, “Okay,” in a rough sort of voice she’s never heard from him before and grabs her to him for a kiss far more heated than what she hoped for. In fact, it’s _too_ heated. It ignites every nerve ending that’s been dozing peacefully since they drifted off last night and brings to the fore of her mind the same insanity that had her walking down the aisle with him.

He’s solid against her and his arms at her back and waist are like steel, but it’s not unpleasant. He keeps her steady and, when her whimper finally has him breaking the kiss, she’s clinging to him in a frightfully damsel-like way. His forehead rests against hers in a manner that is somehow more intimate than anything else up to this point.

“See?” he says in puffs of heated air. “Bad idea.”

“Yes,” she agrees. It really was a terrible idea.

She should move - or he should, one of those - but for the life of her she cannot figure out how to extract herself from his arms and leave this room.

 


End file.
